There are some strong forces in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, who are pushing for the party to hold primaries first before the national convention....CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLE>>>
Those pushing for the primaries to hold first have some reasons for making this move. According to a report by The Nation, they are already making efforts to convince the party leadership to buy into their plan so that presidential, gubernatorial and other primaries will hold first before the party will then hold the national convention.
Why are they making this move?
The first reason behind the move is to use the primary to keep many APC members and their supporters back in the party. There is this fear that many party members may defect from APC if the outcome of the national convention is unfavorable to them. As a way to counters many of those likely defectors, doing the primaries first to produce the party’s candidates will be a way to make those who won, their allies and supporters to stay back in APC irrespective of the outcome of the convention when it holds.
Another reason is to prevent the new APC leaders from playing politics with who emerges candidate(s) of the party if the national convention holds first. The idea of holding the primaries first is also to stop the playing of politics and the practice of making money from aspirants by the new leadership of the party. To avoid that scenario which can affect the party, some forces decided to push for the primaries to hold first. Holding the primaries first will make the party’s candidates to emerge way ahead of the national convention where new national leaders will be elected. It means that once the national leaders are elected, they will hit the ground running by leading the campaign for the party’s candidates to win the elections ahead.
Finally, holding the primaries first will make aspirants to spend less. Apart from paying for nomination forms, lobbying party leaders to get their backing also costs so much money from aspirants. But, if the primaries hold before the national convention, the aspirants will spend less since there are no substantive national leaders to lobby. The Mai Mala Buni Caretaker Committee members are very few and lobbying them will cost less for aspirants. From the foregoing, it is clear that there are good reasons why some forces are pushing to have the primaries first before the national convention. It is left to be seen if the APC leadership will agree or reject the move.
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